In the past couple days, Microsoft has put up two new Halo-related items on the web powered by its Flash-like Silverlight technology; first, the Halo-themed Tafiti search engine (which I've had a little trouble loading) and now an Interactive Halo 3 Manual... which I'm having a bit more luck with. Maybe you will, too.

Bungie's Jonty Barnes, talking to GameSpot at the Tokyo Game Show, mentioned that Bungie had to triple its server capacity to handle the increased load from Halo 3. Not sure whether that meant matchmaking, or community features, or what; but from the latest podcast it seems that stat-tracking will be vastly expanded, and Bungie is aiming to keep player career stats more or less completely and indefinitely.

That's the question posed on the latest podcast at C|Net. With Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 vying for the spot of top dog among next generation consoles, Microsoft has to be counting on their flagship franchise, Halo 3, to provide that final push to original Xbox owners to pony up for a 360. Will it be enough? We'll know soon.

Music 4 Games interviews Bungie maestro Marty O'Donnell about the soundtrack for Halo 3, and the news is all good for fans: more music, better fidelity, more orchestral arrangements and a more interactive feel this time around, not to mention another two disc soundtrack set due out sometime.

Part Three of Ferrex's trilogy on Forge is up at Bungie.net: Advanced Forge Editing. It covers how to edit objects in ways specific to creating certain goal-oriented gametypes, instead of just piles of fusion cores.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What this article does talk about a lot is spawning: spawn points and spawn zones. If you've always been interested in how Halo chooses to spawn you where it does, this article is a treasure trove.